Presidential Power - The mexican and civil wars

James K. Polk came to the presidency belittled as another mediocrity. He
vowed to reverse this popular perception by asserting vigorous leadership.
He defended the annexation of Texas, with its potential for war with
Mexico, and quickly stoked a quarrel with Britain over title to the Oregon
territory. Despite some saber rattling, in the spring of 1846 he resolved
the Oregon dispute peacefully. All the while he took a tougher stance
against Mexico, which refused to recognize its loss of Texas.

Polk ordered troops to occupy disputed territory between Texas and Mexico
implicitly, if not explicitly, with the intent to provoke hostilities.
This tactic led a critic to ask, "Why should we not compromise our
difficulties with Mexico as well as with Great Britain?" The answer
could be found in the classic policy of aggressive
leaders—compromise with the strong but bash the weak. So, when
Mexican forces killed several of the American soldiers occupying the
no-man's land north of the Rio Grande, the president claimed the
Mexicans had shed American blood on American soil, an assertion disputed
by Abraham Lincoln and other Whigs. Nonetheless, on 13 May 1846, a
majority in Congress ratified the president's action by resolving
that a state of war existed.

Dissenters charged that "a secretive, evasive, and high-handed
president himself had provoked Mexico into firing the first shots."
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina denounced Polk's procedure as
"monstrous" because "it stripped Congress of the
power of making war." The war bill "sets the
example," he warned, "which will enable all future
presidents to bring about a state of things, in which Congress shall be
forced, without deliberation, or reflection, to declare war, however
opposed to its convictions of justice or expediency." John Quincy
Adams stated, "It is now established as an irreversible
precedent" that the president "has but to declare that War
exists, with any Nation upon Earth…and the War is essentially
declared." Critics called the Mexican War an "Executive
War" or "Mr. Polk's War." The House of
Representatives voted to censure Polk for "unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally" bringing on war. Lincoln stated that by
accepting Polk's rationale, Congress allowed the president
"to make war at pleasure." Polk mustered support for his
policies with a quasi-official newspaper he established in Washington,
D.C., but garnered most of his popularity by winning the war at low cost
and bringing vast territory into the Union. In subsequent years, his
aggressive style earned him the enduring admiration of the
strong-presidency cult. In all, Polk stretched the president's
power as commander in chief more than had his predecessors.

Polk's immediate successors readily accepted a narrow
constitutional interpretation of their powers, sometimes called the Whig
conception, and faced no foreign crises that tested that view. Although as
a Whig congressman Abraham Lincoln had condemned Polk's
amplification of executive power, as president he exercised that power
boldly in both domestic and foreign affairs. In waging war against the
Confederacy, Lincoln enlarged the army and navy by decree, paid out funds
from the Treasury without congressional appropriation, suspended the writ
of habeas corpus, and closed the mails to reasonable correspondence. He
proclaimed, with questionable legality, a naval blockade of Confederate
ports that embroiled the Union in unnecessary foreign quarrels. In the
Trent
affair, his government claimed exaggerated powers but backed down when
confronted with the possibility of hostilities with Britain.

In September 1864, when Western powers organized an international naval
force to retaliate against the Japanese for assaults on their shipping in
the Strait of Shimonoseki, Lincoln cooperated with Britain and other
nations. Thus, for the first time a president authorized a U.S. vessel to
join a foreign armada in a police action to punish a foreign people for
harming American nationals and others. American sailors remained engaged
in this kind of policing, solely on presidential initiative, for a decade.

More importantly, during the Civil War critics denounced Lincoln's
exercise of presidential authority as despotic. He justified his use of
military force as within the executive's power to suppress
rebellion, as within the scope of his authority as commander in chief, and
as necessary for enabling him to take any necessary measure to subdue the
enemy. His tough measures, he told Congress, "whether strictly
legal or not," were forced upon him. He prevailed because he won
both popular and legislative support. Numerous contemporaries and scores
of scholars since his time have defended his arbitrary rule as necessary
to preserve the Union and to emancipate four million slaves. These were
noble causes and hence validate his actions as proper. Lincoln gave
substance to the concept that, in a crisis, the president, in the name of
the people, should dominate the government. Congress and the courts should
defer to him. He enhanced the power of commander in chief beyond what the
framers of the Constitution had envisioned or what previous executives had
done. Aggressive successors would exploit this precedent, primarily in the
conduct of foreign affairs.

Unlike most presidents, Benjamin Harrison came to office reputedly without
the drive to amass power. Biographers indicate that this attitude changed
after a dispute principally with Germany over Samoa. After tasting
executive power in a foreign confrontation, it entranced him. He used this
authority harshly in a dispute in 1891 with Italy over a lynching of
Italian subjects in New Orleans and in humiliating Chile in the same year
in a quarrel that grew out of a barroom brawl in Valparaiso, where a mob
killed two American sailors. He demanded an apology and reparations. When
the Chilean government hesitated, he threatened force. Analysts maintain
he trumped Congress's war power as decisively as if he had
unilaterally committed troops to battle. The constitutional niceties
involved did not concern most Americans, who in large numbers applauded
his toughness. Harrison intervened also in a revolution in Hawaii. He
denied personal involvement but backed the revolutionaries and sought to
annex the islands. In later years, he again shifted his perspective on
foreign policy. He told a journalist, "We have no commission from
God to police the world."

Grover Cleveland also had an ambivalent attitude toward presidential
power. He came to office believing in a cautious interpretation of the
Constitution's clauses on executive functions. He also regarded the
presidency as superior to any executive position in the world, implying it
had divine sanction. In office, he bridled at legislative restraints.
During his first term, Cleveland intervened with surprising toughness in a
domestic uprising in Nueva Granada (later Colombia), when he exaggerated a
threat to America's right of transit across the Isthmus of Panama.
Unilaterally, he dispatched more than twelve hundred marines backed with
artillery to help crush rebels defying the central government. Jingoes
applauded his vigor but people in the region regarded him as an
imperialist bully. When Germany threatened to take over Samoa, in a kind
of police action, he sent three warships to the islands to preserve their
independence. No hostilities ensued but the big power confrontation
continued.

In his second term, Cleveland acted with unnecessary bellicosity toward
Britain in a dispute over the boundary separating British Guiana and
Venezuela. Through an inflation of the Monroe Doctrine, he claimed
unwarranted authority over the Western Hemisphere. Members of Congress and
much of the public cheered the president's stance as a proper
defense of national honor. Historians and others perceived his saber
rattling, with its risk of war over a quarrel posing no threat to the
United States, as a dangerous exploitation of presidential power.

In a rebellion in Cuba, Cleveland resisted pressure from Congress,
journalists, and much of the concerned public to lead the country into war
to force Spain to relinquish its colony. He told legislators,
"There will be no war with Spain over Cuba while I am
president." When one of them reminded him that Congress could on
its own declare war, he responded that the Constitution also made him
commander in chief. As such, he said, "I will not mobilize the
army." Cleveland's perception of presidential power produced
a standoff with Congress that lasted until he left office. Views vary on
William McKinley's exercise of power in foreign affairs. Historians
depict him as both dominant and passive. He entered the presidency with
respect for congressional authority and with a circumscribed view of its
powers. Instead of asking Congress for a declaration of war against Spain,
he requested discretionary authority to use the armed forces. It led a
senator to ask why legislators should "give the President power to
intervene and make war, if he sees fit, without declaring war at
all?" Congress granted McKinley the power he desired. He served an
ultimatum on Spain, blockaded Cuban ports, and thus initiated hostilities.
On 24 April 1898, Spain declared war, and the following day Congress voted
that a state of war had existed since the date of the blockade. After
that, the story goes, McKinley shed his passivity and became an
aggressive, virile leader. He willingly took on the responsibility of war
and, after victory, of policing another country's possession. Also
at this time, when he could not round up enough votes in the Senate to
annex Hawaii by treaty, he did so with a joint resolution of Congress,
following the precedent set by Tyler. McKinley then governed the islands
with a presidential commission.

When Filipinos demanded the right to rule themselves, McKinley refused,
and they fought the American occupiers. He then deployed large forces in
an undeclared war he justified as a police action. Critics asked,
"How can a president of the great republic be blind to the truth
that freedom is the same, that liberty is as dear and that self-government
is as much a right in the Philippines as in the United States?"

McKinley exerted his will in another military venture. As commander in
chief, he sent five thousand troops to China to join an international
expeditionary force to suppress Boxer rebels. Analysts point out that he
intervened for political purposes, or to demonstrate hard-hitting
leadership in foreign affairs in an election year. Publicly, though, he
justified his "international police duty" with the now
established principle of protecting American lives and property. The
Philadelphia Times,
however, termed the intervention "an absolute declaration of war
by the executive without the authority or knowledge of Congress, and it is
without excuse because it is not necessary." Neither constitutional
restraints nor the critics mattered much because both Congress and the
public approved of McKinley's conduct. Partisan biographers and
analysts have viewed him as a courageous executive who maneuvered both
Congress and the public into accepting presidential primacy in foreign
relations. They praise him also for asserting executive power in external
affairs in an era of purported congressional ascendancy.